The secularism of the Quebec state has been made a cardinal value by this government. The motivations put forward are diverse, some more legitimate than others, but the fact remains that anyone who wants to listen is told that Quebecers maintain a relationship of mistrust, even disdain, towards all religions, that the Church imposed on their daily lives for too long, that all religions threaten the principle of equality between the sexes and that the State must complete its detachment from the clergy, of whatever religion, by regulating even the dress code of those who embody his authority, including teachers.
An explosive context
The debate resumed with renewed vigor this week, when young people in secondary school reportedly demanded a room for prayer in their school. It was an opportunity for everyone to remember that we had deconfessionalized our public education network and that it is important that religion does not come back through the back door, sneakily and above all against the current of the spirit. of law 21.
And now the Prime Minister, armed with his Twitter application, explains to us that our culture of solidarity as a people is rooted in Catholicism, allowing us to distinguish ourselves on the continental scale.
Pardon?
I thought that we had collectively decided to kick religion from our cottages, that it threatened equality between men and women and that we had to be wary of it like the plague. I thought that people in authority had to demonstrate unfailing neutrality. Isn’t François Legault a person in authority of the nation?
The Prime Minister’s tweet is certainly not malicious. The Church certainly played a social role in the Quebec of yesteryear, a role that is certainly not only positive given the trauma that has been dragged on since then and that is advanced to justify the withdrawal of certain fundamental rights from those who have a rather positive relationship to religion.
To explain his clumsy tweet, the Prime Minister adds that we must distinguish between secularism and heritage. And that’s where the discussion went from awkward to surreal. Where do we draw the line between heritage and religion? Is everything dealing with the Catholic religion patrimonial and everything else religious and therefore must arouse mistrust?
I am far from being a defender of secularism sanitizing the public space of any expression of faith, I subscribe rather to the idea that the State must be neutral and not take for any religion or for the absence of religion so as to represent the whole of his society. The fact remains that when we support closed and strict secularism, when we embody a moral authority as Prime Minister and when we claim that anyone who questions Bill 21 is an enemy of Quebec, we should keep a little embarrassment.
Like what, you have to turn your thumbs seven times before chirping.